


Lady in Red

by NorroenDyrd



Series: The Weirdos of Thedas [11]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fade Romance, Fantasizing, Heart-to-Heart, Human/Monster Romance, Mild Smut, Sharing a Body, Tevinter Imperium, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 18:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17430842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Once, Inquisitor Lavellan received a war table mission to deal with a rogue Sister that attempted to convince the Haven refugees that Corypheus is the true Herald of Andraste. The advisors, along with Mother Giselle, assumed that the poor young thing was either confused or a secret Venatori agent... But the truth is much simpler: she has developed a most embarrassing crush on the darkspawn magister, which the Inquisitor only discourages because she believes Corypheus beyond redemption, not because she finds him hideous.(The Lavellan here is the same as in Visitations, but this story may be read as a standalone).





	Lady in Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FuckTheChantry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuckTheChantry/gifts).



She tells Mother Giselle that she stopped having the dreams. It is a lie - even though she doubts that the Mother would have dragged her out by the hair and ordered a Templar to flog her ‘for letting demons into her mind’, like the head of the Chantry where she was lay sister used to do, even for far more innocent things. Like giggling too loudly.

This is nothing like giggling too loudly. This is a myriad, myriad times worse; more shameful; more revolting. She knows that now. She knows what has happened to her. She has gone mad, driven into raving blather by what she saw amid the flames of Haven; it was a mercy on the Inquisition’s part to take her back in, after the things she screamed in the town squares, the roar of those flames still pounding in her ears so that she scarcely heard her own voice.

The head of her old Chantry certainly would not have allowed them to keep her like this - alive, unflogged, tucked into a clean, comfortable little room full of bright sunlight. Considering… How she has always been. Too jumpy, too touchy for her twenty years of age. Notorious for crying over the slightest pang of pain, and then crying even harder over being teased for it. She is not normal, never has been - and this is just further proof of that. These… these dreams that she was so ready to embrace; the dreams that still haunt her, churning up a bitter shame within her stomach.

She still sees him almost every time she closes her eyes. Just the way she saw him on that rocky slope overlooking Haven. Tall, with his head carried high, and with the shards of pulsing corrupted crystal burning around his twisted face, all aglimmer with the reflections of the raging fire, like a roughly chiseled ruby crown. She sees his hands, those enormous blackened claws, and imagines how tiny and frail a human hand would look when gently cupped into them - and even through the misty billows of the Fade, she can feel the very real, very hot tears gush out in between her tightly shut eyelids. Because she knows now - she knows that all of this is nonsense. Just everything she said to those poor refugees was nonsense. There is nothing gentle about this… creature; nothing pure or noble or…

'Beautiful!’

A breathless voice yanks her out of the woozy state she has drifted off to once again - because the hours of meditation prescribed by Mother Giselle 'for the healing of her soul’ are far too long, and far too still. She blinks, and gasps, and discovers that Lady Lavellan, the leader of the Inquisition herself, has walked into her room and is hovering on tiptoe just beyond the threshold, with her hands clasped behind her back in concentration and her enormous lyrium-coloured eyes darting all over the foliage-like mess of papers scattered across the floor.

Her drawings. Her blood runs cold. Her drawings! She meant to destroy them, to rip them up and throw them into one of the braziers outside - to erase every last trace of the inhuman visage from her tainted, delirious, cursed dreams. But all she had the heart for was scoop them up and toss them off her narrow, barrzen bed, her heart swelling sickeningly to fill up her whole, from the pit of her stomach to her prickly, burning throat. This same sensation now returns, as she follows Lady Lavellan’s gaze, which appears intent, excited even… And not really judgemental?

'These are so beautiful!’ Lady Lavellan repeats, beaming at her - the sheepish little figure sitting up on the bed covers, her legs folded under her and her shoulders hunched tensely.

'Corypheus really does have striking features, doesn’t he? You have shaded them so well! I can almost hear his voice scorch my face all over again! Have you heard his voice?’

'Yes, from a distance,’ she answers weakly, feeling as if she had just pressed her back against an apostate’s fire rune. That feeling does not fade until she tosses her head, forcing the deep, commanding rumble out of her mind. Maker, why can’t she be… normal?

'Have you come to punish me, Your Worship? For saying all those… wicked things? About you being an impostor, and C… Corypheus being the true Herald of Andraste? I… They say I went mad, Your Worship, and it m-must be true…’

'Gods, of course I won’t punish you!’ Lady Lavellan exclaims, perching beside her and lacing their fingers in a reassuring handshake. 'And I don’t think you are mad, or wicked, either! I just came to check on you! To see if you wanted anything’.

'What I want,’ she blurts out, her voice caving in on itself like a feeble, weepy thing of wax that has begun to melt away. 'Is for him… to leave me be! Look at him, Your Worship!’

She gestures desperately at the paper foliage; at the ember-bright eyes that are inset into a tangled, lumpy net of veins and unnatural folds of stretched-out skin, and follow her silently wherever she turns.

'He is a monster! I know that in my mind - but in my heart, I keep wondering… what it would have been like to stand beside him; to follow where he led; to…’

She swallows her words, a spike of pain driving into her chest, and then spits out, horrified by her own new bout of madness,

'It’s wrong, wrong, wrong! Why can’t I stop being like this?! Why can’t I stop obsessing over… what is he? A darkspawn magister?!’

'Hush,’ Lady Lavellan murmurs, drawing her closer so she can sob on her chest. 'There is nothing wrong about loving a monster. About discovering beauty in something… someone that everyone else only accepts as a hideous aberration. And trust me, nobody wishes Corypheus was worthy of love more than me.’

Lady Lavellan signs deeply.

'I looked into his eyes - I saw how much he had suffered. I saw the pain, left by… By wanting to present himself before his gods… like a child showing off what they can do before a parent… Only to find a cold, indifferent silence. And I saw all the confusion he was in, wandering through a world so different from his old home. If he… If he only realized that destroying everything around him will not heal him; if he only regretted what he and the other ancient magisters had done to the world, and helped make things better  - like the Architect, the friend of the Hero of Ferelden that Jowan told me about… I would have been the first to hug him, and soothe him, and cheer him on if he found love again. But - but I am afraid he is not like that. Not like the Architect. He… He would have broken your heart. Not with what he is, but with what he does’.

'I… I don’t understand…’ she stutters, gazing up into the eyes of lyrium blue. 'Are you saying… that Corypheus is evil… but I… I am not disgusting for… finding him…’

She grinds her teeth and hisses the word out as an accusation directed at her own self.

’…Attractive?’

'No, you are not. You have a big heart - and it’s a horrible shame that Corypheus will never deserve it’.

 

 

 

Later that evening, long after Lady Lavellan leaves (having helped her pick up and neatly stack her drawings, gushing praise of her sense of shape and light all the way), she dreams a dream again. It is not like her usual ones, though: she sees herself not in her usual modest vestments, but in a flowing gown, shaded a deep, bleeding crimson and adorned with swirls of gold. Gliding slowly across the floor of an endless chamber, all square columns and spiky vaults almost lost in a reddish haze far overhead, she studies her reflection in the polished stone - and does not recognize her features. The woman that looks out of the ebony depths, touching her face in bewilderment, is oaky dark like Starkhaven whiskey, with a thick braid of black hair twisted several times around her head - a sleek, slumbering serpent.

This… This is a Tevinter woman; and the words escape her cherry-painted lips, as she turns around to address other figures that drift among the columns, are the words of the old Imperium. She is not certain how she knows them, what spirit has whispered them to her - but they roll off her tongue with a familiar effortlessness, and she understands them, just as she understands the words that the crowd murmurs back at her (idle small talk mostly)… And the words that suddenly reverberate under the vaults, rushing from the direction of the grand gilded staircase, broad enough for a carriage to pass.

Her heart stops. It’s… It’s his voice. That rumble that, heard up close, sends her knees buckling more than ever.

'Brothers and sisters of the Imperium! Tonight, we celebrate - but tomorrow, my fellow priests and I shall embark on the most daring journey yet; a journey the likes of which the world has never known, and will never know since! A voyage into the very heart of the Fade, where we shall find our gods, and lay the gifts of our glory at their feet!’

Even as a mortal, yet untouched by the Blight that he himself will soon unleash, he is still a head taller than most of the people in the room, including the procession of men and women that trails after him down the staircase, each clad into lavish black robes that billow around them like darkness woven into fabric. When they complete their leisurely, calmly dignified descent, he walks on through the living corridor formed for him by the quietened, bowing guests, a sneer of superiority playing on his thin lips. The candlelight chisels his face into a starkly contrasting mask of flaring glow and charcoal shadow; the lyrium has not yet distorted his features, but they are still not quite conventionally attractive, with most of his allure coming from the keen brown eyes… Eyes that stop on her. A surge of heat, a thump against her ribs - and it dawns on her that she is the only one in the crowd who has not dipped her head.

But… Should she? She may be looking through the eyes of a Tevinter woman, but her mind is still her own, still that of an Andrastian… It’s not proper, showing reverence to the priest of a heathen deity… A… d-dragon, she thinks?

'You do not bow before the first of Dumat,’ he drawls, now looming over her, the darkness of his clothing encircling her red. 'Why?’

'I…’

She is still speaking old Tevene, but the words, rushed and squeaky and foolish, come from her, not her… unfortunate host.

'I… I was struck by how handsome you are, mmm… milord’.

He laughs. A fleeting, throaty sound that caresses her like dark treacle.

'Am I now? I am afraid I put little stock in what lies on the surface. Come - let me show you’.

He extends his hand; there are jewelled rings snaking all over his long fingers, and intricately carved artificial claws attached over the nails. Her own hand looks so small, so frail as, after a moment’s hesitation, she lays it onto his palm… And then the world blurs.

There is music, low and heady, beating an ancient rhythm that covers her skin with goose bumps; there is wine, tangy, blood-like, slaking their thirst in between the complicated loops that they trace across the chamber, the floor flying away from underneath them; and there is flesh, warm, smooth flesh, more and more of it emerging with every flapping thrust into their tangling clothes, tucked away into a side room when the dancing is done.

Thankfully, the Tevinter whose body she has somehow been allowed to inhabit seems to know her way through mazes upon mazes of knitted limbs, of hurried tongues, of fingers locking and unlocking and diving and tracing patterns on sweat-drenched skin. For he is assured, and demanding, and fast, oh Maker, so fast; the real her, who only knew a tumble or so round the corner of a village smithy, under the excuse of 'being sent for supplies’ on behalf of her Chantry, would never have been able to catch up with him.

When the blur cools down, and she finds herself lying across his chest, sated to the fullest yet still biting her lips when his clawless hand draws lazy circles over her forearm, she clears her throat, and dares to say something that is not a flustered expression of gratitude for his praise of her dancing, or a moan, or a direction where he should pleasure her.

'Milord… Have you fully considered the consequences of what you will do tomorrow? What if you… can’t find the gods? Or what if such a tremendous disruption of the Veil affects the waking world?’

'I am a Champion of Tevinter,’ he tells her curtly, his voice like metal and his fingers like claws, bruising her even with the adornments off. 'Everything else is of little consequence’.

She props herself up on her elbow, and searches his face, which is a mask again in the first flash of dawn.

 

 

 

’…And this is how my dream ended,’ she tells Lady Lavellan, when the latter drops by again and so cordially invites her to afternoon tea ('A nice herbal beverage is just what she needs’, Lady Lavellan chirped to Mother Giselle).

She has omitted… the dirty parts, of course; but there is one thing, one lingering crack of pain, that she feels safe telling Lady Lavellan about.

'With my eyes looking into his… And finding what you said he found in the Fade. Cold and indifference. There was no doubt in his mind that what he was doing was justified, and… And I knew then that you were right, Your Worship. There is so little light in him; such a waste of a… titillating voice and body, really’.

She shivers a little, clinking her spoon absently against the teacup.

'It taught me… a lesson, this dream. Or memory. Or whatever it was… It certainly felt so real’.

Lady Lavellan nods vigorously.

'I think you may have actually travelled all the way back within your mind… And entered the thoughts of that Tevinter lady, long ago. After all, the laws of time are different in the Fade. If they are even applicable. I will have to ask an expert’.

Silence falls over their little table in the garden, as they both thoughtfully sip their tea… And unbeknownst to them, the same silence fills the overgrown ruins - clean-picked white bones sticking out of the dense sea of moss - as a lone darkspawn magister, yet again, tries and fails to call out to Dumat… And suddenly remembers the girl in the red dress, her serpentine braid lying half-undone on the pillow, her eyes questioning and sincere, shimmering with a prophecy of the future he brought upon the world. It takes a long, pained shriek, and a blast of sizzling red magic that shatters the ancient pillar nearest to him, to force her out of his mind.

 


End file.
